Russia discovers two secret paintings under avant-garde masterpiece

Art experts in Russia say they have discovered two earlier paintings with colourful Cubist images hidden under a monochrome masterpiece by Kazimir Malevich – “Black Square”.

Russia discovers two secret paintings under avant-garde masterpiece

Art experts in Russia say they have discovered two earlier paintings with colourful Cubist images hidden under a monochrome masterpiece by Kazimir Malevich – “Black Square”.

“We proved that the initial image is a Cubo-Futurist composition, while the painting lying directly under the Black Square – the colours of which you can see in the cracks – is a proto-Suprematist composition,” said Yekaterina Voronina, an art researcher at the Tretyakov

Researchers also found an inscription in Malevich’s handwriting on the white border surrounding the black square that (while it still being deciphered by analysits) seems to read “Negroes battling in a cave”.

This is apparently a reference to a much earlier painting of a black square, called Combat des Negres dans une cave, pendant la nuit (Negroes fighting in a cellar at night) by French writer and humorist Alphonse Allais, painted in 1897. If correct, this would cast new light on Malevich’s painting, suggesting it was in a singular dialogue with the French picture.

Malevich first embraced Cubo-Futurism, a Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1910s, which combined Cubism with the ideas of European Futurism. He then came up with the concept of Suprematist art – rejecting the idea of representation in favour of basic geometric shapes, and “Black Square” was his manifesto.

Malevich’s Black Square is part of the Tretyakov’s current exhibition “The Mark of Malevich”, which marks the centenary of the unveiling of the artist’s manifesto painting.